Today we started the hardcore tapering, meaning that this week’s long run was under 20 miles. Yeah, it disturbs me, too. But that’s how it goes when you have 13 DAYS UNTIL RACE DAY! Ohhhh I can’t breathe for the vast quantity of excitement coursing through my veins right now (that and the lack-of-blood-sugar in said veins, as I am waiting patiently at the Apple store for my files to alll back up onto a hard drive and I will have to wait here much longer, apparently, and I haven’t eaten in forever, so that is sort of fiddling with my bodily/breathing/metabolic functions as well) (anyway).

Grandma’s Marathon in 2 weeks. I am running it this time with the illustrious C., whom you may remember from blogposts of yore. And if you don’t, you are not sufficiently loyal and you can go straight to hell allow me to give you a quick rundown: C. is a delightful person w/ whom I went to college, and who is now doing Ironmans.

WHERE TO: Tralalalala, fields of happy green non-injured beauty, covered in bunnies and flowers and, yeah, OK, a few blisters.

MOOD: Ecstaaaaaatic.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:

When we last left off, we had worked our way through Stage 2, which involves copious amounts of anger and questionable ways of dealing with it.

And now, reluctantly, I invite you to enter

Stage 3: Mourning

Alright, sweetheart. Let it out. Cry open-mouthed, choking sobs and bang your fists on the floor. Drink a pint of Wild Turkey. Make and eat an entire loaf of banana-peanut-butter-chocolate-chip bread WITHOUT EVEN BAKING IT. <rubs your back, holds you close> There, there. Yes, I realize that you just vommed whiskey/batter all over my chest. It’s OK. Shhhhh-

My dear readers, I lost roughly 15 pounds over the weekend. Or, at least, that’s my estimate, and I’m pretty sure that 98% of it was expelled in the form of post-nasal drip. You see, I stayed home from work on Friday and stayed home from life yesterday as the result of a truly fantastically ass-kicking cold. The kind that–if you weren’t doped to the gills on NyQuil (for the congestion) and ketamine (for the hell of it) and nutmeg (for the purpose of testing urban legends) and thus unable to do anything other than pet your roommates’ faces and mutter, “pretty kittyyyyyy…”–would make you sit back, fold your arms, and nod appreciatively at the awe-inspiring power of Mother Nature and Her Evil Pathogen Minions.

There are ruts, dear readers, and then there are Ruts. Ruts with a capital R and 10-foot concrete walls on each side with no footholds to allow you to scramble out and scurry away. Ruts created by having run the greatest race of your life and then having written happy fun blog posts about it and having fallen increasingly in love with hundreds of people, especially the residents of Hagerstown, Maryland, in the process. And then realizing that your life no longer has purpose. No goals. No future plans. <choking bourgeois sob> Ruts that can only be broken out of when you are at the Red Derby on your birthday a little over a week ago with your college friend Mr. Cool thrusting two tequila shots into your hands and also saying, “ARE YOU SO PUMPED FOR THE JINGLE ALL THE WAY 10K?”

Nothing in my body is quite back to any sort of normalcy yet since last weekend. It took a whole three days before I could stand up or sit down without vocalizing. My walk was particularly pitiful-looking, so much so that my editor at work told me on Monday that, instead of me going to talk to him in his office when he hollered for me (for my workplace is the apex of professionalism), we could just yell across the hall to each other.

As it stands right now, running again is still tough. I know, I know; I had planned on a luxurious month or so of doing anything but running post-race. Biking! Power-walking! Jazzercising! 1980s Jane Fonda aerobics videos! Shakeweights! Learning to play the theremin! Calming the house thermostat wars! Working on my issues with relatively innocuous words like “naughty,” “fungible,” and “hosiery”!

Yesterday was the Marine Corps Marathon, and I gotta tell you…sometimes race day does not go according to plan. I mean, sometimes you get blisters, sometimes your shorts chafe, sometimes your gels fall out of your sports bra, and sometimes you slow way down to chat up that dreamboat who is, frankly, below your running standards but waaaaay above your “reasonably hygenic and literate” standards.